The Box in the Attic
by Atalan
Summary: Somewhere in the middle of twelve long years, Remus Lupin reflects on the double-edged nature of memory.


**The Box in the Attic  
**  
  
He was thinking about it again.  
  
The connection had been obscure this time. A song on the radio. He hadn't heard it for years. He'd had a recording of it once, he thought, and wondered where it was, half-intending to go and find it.  
  
Then he'd remembered that it was in the box.  
  
So now he was thinking about it again. Would it hurt so badly, he asked himself, just to go and open the box, find the song? Whenever he started thinking about the box in the attic, the temptation to open it would spring into his heart as fresh and undaunted as it had been at the start.  
  
The pain followed quickly, before he could even get up and head for the ladder. It _would_ hurt, of course. He was beginning to think, now, that it would always hurt.  
  
He remembered it so clearly, now that it had come to mind. It had been a gift. Almost a throwaway thing, one of Sirius' bright ideas. He'd handed it to him one summer just before they got off the Hogwart's express.  
  
"Look, Remus, just try listening, okay?" He still recalled the mixture of genuine pleading and amusement that had been in Sirius' eyes. "I know you don't think much of my taste in music, but you'll like this, I promise."  
  
He'd been obedient, despite his low expectations. He remembered the label had been painstakingly written out in Sirius' most legible script, the tracks carefully numbered. He hadn't been sure about the first few songs, but then he'd found, to his surprise, that Sirius was right.  
  
He'd listened to it on a loop for the rest of the summer. His memories of that year were tied up inextricably with the music. That had been the summer Sirius and James had come up with their scheme to hunt dragons in the Welsh mountains. They'd plotted and planned, the owls had flown thick and fast between the four of them. They were seventeen, old enough to go camping - as they assured their parents - alone for a fortnight.  
  
He smiled despite himself, remembering. None of them were afraid of a bit of hardship, but neither were they particularly fond of it. Their tents had been thoroughly magical, they'd carted half a ton of "necessary" bespelled tools and utensils with them, and they'd played loud music in the sweeping forest without a thought for local wildlife.  
  
They hadn't seen a sniff of a dragon, of course, and after five days the trip had genuinely become a simple camping expedition. The memories were sharp with the smell of woodsmoke. Peter crouching over the fire, the only one of them who could get it to light and stay afire without magic; James showing off on his broom, high over the treetops; Sirius 'tracking' through the forest, succeeding only in discovering new mudholes and bramble thickets.  
  
Himself, listening to his music in the evenings, teasing James, laughing at Sirius, genuinely impressed with Peter's skill. The same songs, on a loop, over and over. Sirius, grinning at him from his careless sprawl a few feet away on dry pine needles: "Told you you'd like it."  
  
He closed his eyes. There was the pain, unrelenting and bitter. James' smile, eternally boyish, as he wrote to Lily and shrugged off their teasing. Peter's pride, that here where they were forbidden to use magic, his skills outmatched theirs. Sirius' laughter, Sirius glancing at him sideways in a shared joke, Sirius running beside him in animal form as they raced through the trees.  
  
It had been the week of the full moon. They had run free in the sprawling forest, unafraid of recrimination. Little Wormtail riding between Prongs' antlers, Padfoot chasing squirrels and foxs and occasionally leaves, and himself - a full-fledged wolf, but undriven by the maddening presence of humans, unfettered by his companions' caution.  
  
At the end of the summer he'd left the recording at home in his haste to pack. By the time he found it again he'd all but forgotten what it was. It was put away with other half-remembered things. When he found a house of his own, it went with him and had a place on a shelf, still unacknowledged.  
  
Now it was in the box in the attic.  
  
That memory was clear, too. Painfully, coldly clear. Like frozen fire or shattered glass, lancing through skin and flesh and heart and bone. It had been raining, a deluge streaming from a grey sky over a desolate, empty moore. It had been the night of the full moon. It would not be the first he had faced since his life had been torn apart, but it was very nearly so.  
  
He had placed the box in the middle of the threadbare carpet he could not afford to replace. He didn't trouble to light the lamps, and he had felt grim and made of stone as he began to fill it.  
  
First the pictures. Framed or held in albums. Pictures that laughed and smiled at him, mocking him. James grinning like he'd live forever. Peter smiling like he'd no cares in the world. Sirius, closer than a brother, laughing joking _traitor_ Sirius...  
  
Then letters. Notes they'd passed in class, that he'd somehow or other kept. Peter had clear, attractive writing. James' would pass muster. Sirius' had been almost a meaningless scrawl. His own script stood out on some, replies he'd written, that had found their way back to him. The letters all went into the box. Tied together or piled together or in smaller boxes of their own.  
  
Then gifts. Some of them wrenched his heart to lose, but they hurt him more to look at. All sorts of things, a jumble. Adult gifts, children's gifts. Games, gadgets, Sirius' homemade tricks. Crystals, tools, all but useless ornaments. Years and years of gifts of friendship, trust and love.  
  
He had been grieving for months then. It would almost be better if they were all dead. But one had survived: alive but lost forever, even if he could ever (never) forgive what he'd done.  
  
Everything went in. Anything with the tiniest assocation to his lost friends. He was ruthless. He was also weeping by the time he was done. Nonetheless, after he had paused, after he had looked for one long moment at the assortment of objects within, he had closed the lid, sealed it, and carried it laboriously to the attic.  
  
It had been there ever since.  
  
He stared out of the window now, watching the low sun gild the grass with butter-light. Just one song on the radio, and he was thinking about the box again.  
  
Sometimes he thought he would like some reminder. Some little token of the happiness of his childhood. A picture, perhaps, that would smile and wave. It had been years. One reminder. Just to open the door a little way.  
  
... Not without opening it to _everything_. You couldn't pick and choose the heart-memories; they came uninvited, if you made so much as the smallest path for them. And after all this time, still they had the power to render his world empty and meaningless. Just thinking about it was enough. Anything more would be fatal.  
  
Remus Lupin quietly stood up from his table and walked to the door. He would go for a walk in the evening sun. He'd try to forget the song that hovered insistently in his mind's ear, and the smell of woodsmoke, and the laughter of reckless boys.  
  
And the box would stay in the attic.  
  



End file.
